New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) has almost eight hours of secret American drone footage it says shows there are more than 100 mistakes in a book about a controversial raid in Afghanistan.

[...]

NZDF said the drone footage was so compelling and contradicted the veracity of so many claims in the book, it asked the United States to release the footage publicly. But the Americans refused, saying the videos had not been declassified.

The problem, of course, is that because this "evidence" is conveniently secret, we can never know if it shows what NZDF says it does - or even if it exists at all. It should be treated as seriously as the SIS's secret "evidence" showing that Ahmed Zaoui was guilty. And the same goes for any other secret "evidence" NZDF claims to have or wants to rely on at the inquiry.

Some businesses and farmers in Central Hawke's Bay may start rationing water as parts of the Waipawa and Tukituki rivers are already bone dry.

It comes as figures obtained by RNZ show the top six water consent holders in the district are using more than half of all allocated water from the Ruataniwha Aquifer and rivers.

[...]

He asked the council to look at who was using the water and when they crunched the figures for the first time it showed that the top six consent holders were all dairy farms and they were taking more than half of all the allocated water in Central Hawke's Bay.

The largest, Bel Group Dairy Farms, took two and a half times the amount used by the townships of Waipawa and Waipukurau put together.

Roughly six thousand people live in those towns. So that one farmer gets 15,000 times as much water as them. As the article points out, this raises some equity issues. It is simply not fair that a tiny rural elite gets to monopolise our water supplies to enrich themselves at the expense of everybody else. Its even more unfair if they keep getting supplied while others go thirsty. We desperately need to fix this situation, and restore a fair allocation of water. And we need to ensure that those who extract a profit from it, pay for it.

If everyone did as little as New Zealand has promise - a promise we are failing to keep, BTW - then the world would warm by 5.1 degrees by 2100. And that means melted ice-caps, uninhabitable tropics, a collapse of the global food supply, and all the war, famine and death that that involves. As for New Zealand, we just don't know, because NIWA's reference case just doesn't consider effects that high (oddly, they're not studying what we're actually doing). But 5m of sea-level rise will mean great chunks of our major urban areas under water, and the East Coast drought scenarios (already disastrous at 2 degrees) will basicly mean the whole place dries up and blows away. Plus, we'll be flooded with Australians fleeing the baking, uninhabitable wasteland their country will become.

The Prime Minister has talked of climate change as "my generation's nuclear free moment". If that is to be anything more than hot air, we need to dramaticly scale up our ambition and actually do something. The current policy of mouthing platitudes while refusing to do anything which might cost polluters any money or require anyone to change anything they do is not enough. This is about literally saving the world, and the government needs to start acting like it.

Back in September, when the government announced plans to increase proactive release of official information, we learned by accident that they were also considering another review of the OIA, and "intend[ed] to carry out targeted engagement to inform a decision on whether to progress a formal review". As someone interested in OIA reform, I was naturally curious about this, so I sent an OIA off to Justice Minister Andrew Little seeking information about the proposal. I finally got the response back on Friday, after a month-long extension for "consultation". Unfortunately, its not very informative.

You can read the released documents here. As is obvious, all interesting information about the proposal has been redacted. All their specific proposals for reform are secret, as is practically everyone they plan to consult in their "targeted engagement". People with specific expertise in the law? Secret. Bloggers and commentators? Also secret. They do list some media organisations, and the members of the OGP Expert Advisory Group, but everyone else is secret. Which is outrageous when you think about it. The OIA is quasi-constitutional legislation, something that belongs to (and affects) all of us. But rather than a full public consultation, they plan to privilege some voices over others, presenting their select secret proposals to a select secret group, then presenting the stovepiped results to us as a fait accompli. And they kept this entire process secret as well: they decided it all back in May, but never announced anything. The only reason we know about it at all is because of a passing reference in another document. Whether these are the actions of a government committed to transparency, accountability, and participation is left as an exercise for the reader.

As for the quality of their proposals, well, they're secret, so we can't tell. But what they do reveal isn't encouraging. For example, the Ministry of Justice's brief advice on whether the OIA should be extended to Parliament cherry-picks its examples to include only those that support the status quo, while ignoring the obvious counterexample: the UK Parliament is fully subject to its Freedom of Information Act, and this has brought about a huge improvement in accountability. Which doesn't provide much reason for confidence in the quality of their advice. And while they don't seem very keen on extending s48 of the OIA to cover proactive release, repeatedly highlighting the Law Commission's recommendation against extension, all their actual advice is secret, so we can't tell whether its robust or flawed. Which given the huge potential for abuse in the proposal - it would basicly give Paula Bennett total impunity to dox people at will with their benefit, medical, police and tax records - is something we need to know.

We deserve better than this. Its not just politicians, journalists and trouble-making bloggers who use the OIA, but all of us. Steven Price's 2005 study of the OIA contained an extensive list of examples of how ordinary citizens use the Act, and summed it up as "the stuff of democracy". According to the Ombudsman's 2017-18 annual report, individuals made three times as many OIA complaints as journalists, and its 5.5 times as many when you look at the LGOIMA. In short, it's our Act, not theirs. And any non-trivial changes to it require publicly consulting all of us, not just a select group of chosen insiders.

Friday, November 16, 2018

Universal credit has become a serious threat to public health, doctors have said, after a study revealed that the stress of coping with the new benefits system had so profoundly affected claimants’ mental health that some considered suicide.

Public health researchers found overwhelmingly negative experiences among vulnerable claimants, including high levels of anxiety and depression, as well as physical problems and social isolation exacerbated by hunger and destitution.

“Universal credit is not only failing to achieve its stated aim of moving people into employment, it is punishing people to such an extent that the mental health and wellbeing of claimants, their families and of [support] staff is being undermined,” the report states.

It concludes that universal credit is actively creating poverty and destitution, and says it is not fit for purpose for many people with disabilities, mental illness or chronic health conditions. It calls for a radical overhaul of the system before the next phase of its rollout next year.

This system is profoundly evil. And its entirely intentional. Tories have never supported effective welfare systems. Instead, they want them to be cruel and punitive, pour encourager les autres. Every "suicide" due to universal credit is in fact a murder - a murder committed by a cruel and vicious government wanting to eliminate the poor.

meanwhile it'd be interesting to see similar information on the New Zealand welfare system. But I suspect WINZ refuses to collect any useful information, because it could only make them look bad.

Primary teachers are on strike this week, secondary teachers are planning the same, and next year there's the prospect of a joint teachers' strike meaning schools everywhere will shut. Meanwhile, other strike action is shutting down the courts, forcing trials to be delayed and clogging an already overstretched justice system. The underlying cause of this? Nine years of National penny-pinching and trying to "do more with less" has left public servants overworked and underpaid, and now they're sick of it enough to actually do something about it.

The government's response has been to claim there is no more money. Bullshit. Whether there's money for public servants or planes is simply a matter of priorities. And this government's priorities are to spend $2.3 billion on war-toys for America rather than making sure basic government services like schools and the courts function. More generally, they get to decide their financial parameters, such as how fast they pay down National's debt, or even whether to raise taxes to gain additional revenue to boost public services. The fact that they're not considering any of this tells us that providing basic services is simply not their priority. What is their priority? Fuck knows - but its looking like as little as possible while collecting their fat salaries. Just like National, really.

But the New Zealand public does care about those services. We care about whether kids can go to school, and we care about whether the courts function. So unless the government wants us to start caring about them, at the ballot box, it needs to change its priorities and pay up.

Thursday, November 15, 2018

A Waikato dairy farming company has been fined almost $60,000 for discharging effluent into a waterway.

H & S Chisholm Farms Limited has been convicted and fined $57,375 for two discharges of dairy effluent from its South Waikato farm in mid-2017.

[...]

Judge Harland noted that the company's response to the incidents was "exemplary", with significant investment in effluent infrastructure on the farm following the pollution events.

However, she also noted that "dairy farmers in the Waikato region have had ample time to understand what is required to lawfully manage dairy effluent and to become educated about best practice, both in terms of the design, operation and management of effluent systems".

The fine is among the highest for effluent offences in recent years, with two other fines of more than $50,000 and a further six of more than $35,000 in 2017/18. However, the 21 convictions in the past two years involve a tiny fraction of the country's 8000 farm owners and 4000 sharemilkers

Which tells us the scale of the problem: a huge number of dairy farms fail to comply with their resource consents (almost a third in some regions), yet only a tiny number are ever prosecuted for it. Which means that most of these environmental criminals get away with it. if we're to solve this problem and clean up our waterways, that needs to change. The law needs much greater enforcement, so that dirty farmers will credibly fear prosecution and change their behaviour. Fortunately, the government looks like it is planning to do just that, by allowing the EPA to prosecute where councils won't.

Fijians went to the polls yesterday in the second elections since the 2006 coup. While bad weather forced polling to be suspended in some areas, and the final count is not yet in, the provisional results show coup-leader Voreqe Bainimarama's FijiFirst party has retained its majority. The iTaukei SODELPA party, led by another former coup-leader Sitiveni Rabuka looks likely to be the main opposition, with about 38% of the vote, the Ind-Fijian National Federation Party coming third on 7.5%. There's 30% of the vote left to be counted, and things would have to shift significantly for FijiFirst to be forced into coalition.

FijiFirst threw everything it had at this election, unsuccessfully trying to convict the leader of the opposition over his asset declaration (which, if successful, would have disqualified him from the poll and made all votes for him invalid, costing SODELPA around half its total vote), and prosecuting another high-profile SODELPA candidate for sedition (again, unsuccessfully), and disqualifying former Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry from competing. Fiji's election system is built entirely on candidate recognition, with most votes going to party leaders - for example, ~over 70% of FijiFirst's votes were cast for Bainimarama - so eliminating high-profile candidates can have hugely disproportionate effects. And with their dirty tactics, they've managed to just retain power. Which suggests that in a fair election, they might not be so lucky. While none of Fiji's political parties is especially appealing, in order for the coup legacy to end, its architects need to be de-elected. The sooner that happens, the better.

The Minister responsible for Pike River re-entry has this morning announced that a plan to re-enter the mine drift to retrieve the bodies of the 29 men who died there in 2010 will proceed.

Andrew Little made the announcement at Parliament, in front of a number of the families of the Pike 29.

"Re-entry of the Pike River Mine will proceed. To the Pike River families, to New Zealand, we are returning."

He said he decided the Te Kāhui Whakamana Rua Tekau Mā Iwa - Pike River Recovery Agency, recommended course of action to enter the drift, using the existing access tunnel, was by far the safest option.

Good. Because this isn't just a sentimental matter of recovering remains. Pike River is also a crime scene, and re-entry may help the police gather the evidence required to hold those responsible to account. They've already bribed their way out of trouble once - actions later found by the Supreme Court to be "an unlawful agreement to stifle prosecution". Hopefully they won't be able to do that again.

So, the rumours were true: the government has appointed former Labour deputy Annette King as High Commissioner to Australia. So much for Winston Peters' supposed opposition to such appointments - it turns out that he's really only opposed when they're from the wrong party. But the normal arguments against cronyism are even stronger in the case of this job. Australia is our nearest neighbour and one of our most important diplomatic relationships. It deserves better than to be used as a retirement home for washed-up, has-been former MPs.

Tuesday, November 13, 2018

In a case of the hunter becoming the hunted, people making Official Information Act requests cannot bank on remaining anonymous.

Over the past two years the Commerce Commission has received 10 requests from companies wanting to know the identity of those seeking official information about them.

Three requesters - all of them companies - were identified with their consent, five had their identity withheld under the privacy protection clause in the Act, and a further two cases were undecided.

While agencies should consult requesters about release, they're not bound to withhold if you object, and s48 of the OIA gives officials absolute protection from liability if they release your information in good faith. I've started putting a "fuck off" notice on the bottom of my requests, making it clear that I do not consent to any release of my personal information to any third party, but ultimately the only way to protect your personal information is not to give it away in the first place. If you care about your privacy, or think anyone else might care about the requests you are making, you should use a false name. Its not illegal, its not immoral - its just basic privacy protection. And fortunately, we have an online platform which makes it very easy...

Monday, November 12, 2018

That's the Chief Ombudsman's formal opinion of Horowhenua District Council's practice of redirecting, blocking and editing emails from people on a secret shitlist. While the Ombudsman recognises that sometimes members of the public might send emails that require management to prevent harassment, the way Horowhenua Council was doing this - in secret, without any formally recorded justification, and blocking innocuous and ordinary business content as well as abusive emails - was simply wrong. They highlight the way the blocks prevented communication with elected representatives and encouraged one councillor to route official emails through a private account to ensure they were received - effectively undermining good record-keeping practice and the LGOIMA. Apparently the policy has already been ended, which saves the Ombudsman from having to recommend that, but they have recommended an apology. Given Horowhenua's toxic environment, it'll be interesting to see whether the Council even tries to fake sincerity on that.

The State Services Commission's inquiry into its appointment of Deputy Police Commissioner Wally Haumaha has reported back - and unsurprisingly, cleared the SSC of any wrongdoing. The full report is here, but the short version is that the appointment panel didn't know of Haumaha's support for convicted rapists Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum, because Police Commissioner Mike Bush thought it had all been resolved and didn't think it was "relevant", even when explicitly asked by the Minister. Which seems to be extremely poor judgement on his part. But they go further, and claim that it wouldn't have mattered anyway if the panel had known, because they would have agreed with the Police Commissioner and ignored it.

Which is the exactly the sort of result you get when organisations investigate themselves, and simply shows the extent to which the police and SSC still don't get it. Their past behaviour of raping women and covering up for it has left the police with a lingering taint and caused many people to lose confidence in them. If they want to be rid of that taint and regain the public's trust, they need to change, and be seen to change. The fact that the Commissioner considers concerns about it to no longer be relevant, and sees no political risk in appointing someone perceived as condoning that past behaviour to a senior position sends a clear message that the police haven't changed, and that they are utterly blind to public concerns about their integrity. And that in itself seems to be a reason to sack him as well as Haumaha.

Back in 2007, the New Zealand Police invaded Ruatoki, terrorised the town, and held children at gunpoint as part of a series of raids against "terrorists". But when it came time to prosecute the seventeen people they'd arrested, the whole case fell apart because the police's behaviour had been "unlawful, unjustified, and unreasonable". No-one faced terrorism charges because, fundamentally, none of those targeted had broken that law: no-one had committed or planned a "terrorist act" (and no, talking shit about firing the Prime Minister out of a trebuchet doesn't count). In the end, despite four Arms Act convictions, it was a humiliating fiasco for the police, requiring a public apology to the people whose town they had invaded.

The Government is reviewing the anti-terror laws because of the carnage of the poorly enacted Urewera raids meaning authorities don't want to use them.

Minister responsible for GCSB and SIS Andrew Little, has ordered officials to fully scrutinise the Terrorism Suppression Act and the Counter Terrorism Act, both passed in the aftermath of the 9/11 and Bali bombings.

They were judged "unworkable" after the botched Urewera raids in 2007, and Little says authorities are now "reluctant" to use them.

While Little wants to remain open to what will happen, police are pushing for greater powers to intervene earlier when they detect suspicious behaviour.

Unlike the Minister, I don't regard reluctance to use anti-terror laws as a problem. Instead, they're something police should be reluctant to use. The fact that they want to use them (and in the complete absence of anything remotely approaching a terrorist threat, or which can't be dealt with under existing laws criminalising assault, murder and arson) says rather more about their desire to crush political dissent than any real need. And in this context, the reference to UK-style laws criminalising people for what they read on the internet - which are primarily used to persecute academics - is chilling. Faced with a lack of real terrorism to justify their inflated budget, the police want to introduce ThoughtCrime. And that's something any democraticly-minded kiwi should oppose.

But we know how this will go: they'll have a secret, closed-shop review, agree to limit our human rights for their convenience, and the law will be rammed through under urgency, backed by a National-Labour duopoly. Democracy? Not where "terrorism" is concerned, apparently.

On Friday, the Supreme Court upheld the right of the courts to formally declare laws to be inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act. This does not overturn or invalidate them, but it sends a clear message to Parliament that it needs to fix the situation. But the government's response to this situation is that it is "not a priority":

Prisoners look unlikely to get the vote any time soon even after a Supreme Court ruling in their favour.

[...]

Justice Minister Andrew Little told reporters he personally disagreed with the ban, but the government as a whole had yet to take a position.

"It's not that much of a priority," he said.

"We haven't even had a discussion about that and it would be wrong for me to express any view on behalf of the government about it."

Ministers were unlikely to consider the issue for at least a year, he said.

This is simply not acceptable. When the Supreme Court makes a ruling like this, it should automatically become a priority for Parliament, and should be formally drawn to its attention for a response. The government has already signalled that that is what it wants to do in future, so why won't it do it in this case? And there's a pressing need: we're having an election in 2020, and it would simply be unacceptable given the ruling for prisoners to be unable to vote in it.

The government needs to make this a priority. And the longer it refuses to do so, the stronger the argument is for simply taking it out of their hands. If politicians will not protect our human rights, lets remove them from the equation: repeal s4 of the Bill of Rights, and the courts fix the law directly when the politicians abuse it.

Not that they did well out of it. Their empires fell, and in the "winners", their class was almost annihilated (I guess noblesse oblige was good for something). But we got the worse end of the deal. Their selfish war fucked up the entire twentieth century: the Russian Revolution, the inevitable rematch with Germany, and the subsequent Cold War can all be traced to the First World War. And we're still living with the aftermath, in the shape of the contradictorypromises made by Britain to conquer the Middle East, and the artificial countries it left there.

The First World War is a warning of the danger of giving our political elites the power to wage war. While their stupidity couldn't kill all of us then, it can now. Stupidity, greed and selfishness being inevitable amongst elites, the only way we can defend ourselves from them is to disarm them. Peace is our only protection. And next time they tell us to fight, we should tell them to go fuck themselves.

Swamp kauri must not leave the country unless it has been processed into a product, a court has ruled.

A Supreme Court of New Zealand ruling, released on Friday, found that, to be lawfully exported, a swamp kauri item must be a product in itself and in its final or kitset form and it must be ready either to be used or to be installed into a larger structure.

[...]

The wording and purpose of the Forests Act made it clear that the definition of finished or manufactured indigenous timber product contained is intended to ensure that value is added to indigenous timber before it is exported, the court ruled.

To be lawfully exported, an item must be a product in itself and in its final or kitset form and it must be ready either to be used or to be installed into a larger structure, the court ruled.

A table top, which was not a product in its own right, could not be exported and logs with surface carving were unlikely to meet the definition, the court ruled.

Or, to put it another way, the law means exactly what it says. Which really does invite the question of why MPI thought it meant something different and that these exports were permissible. Their decision has enabled years of pillage and environmental destruction, and there needs to be accountability for it. Heads must roll.

Private spy companies infiltrating environmental groups to disrupt and spy on them for governments and toxic industries seems to be becoming increasingly common. In New Zealand, there's a whole company, Thompson and Clark Investigations, specialising in it. But UK anti-asbestos activists have found a solution: sue the fuckers:

A private security firm has been forced to pay damages to five anti-asbestos campaigners after they discovered it had spied on them.

The firm, K2 Intelligence, paid an infiltrator for four years to masquerade as a sympathetic documentary-maker to obtain confidential information about leading activists in the worldwide campaign to ban asbestos.

K2 Intelligence, which made no admission of wrongdoing, agreed to make the payments after the five campaigners took legal action in the high court against it, Matteo Bigazzi, K2’s executive managing director in London, and the hired infiltrator, Robert Moore.

The size of the damages was not disclosed, but was described as substantial by the campaigners’ lawyers.

The high court in London had heard that K2 passed the information to clients in the asbestos industry. The court was told that the aim of the espionage was to gather information about the campaigners, their methods, funding and future plans.

[...]

The campaigners had taken legal action alleging breach of confidence, misuse of private information and breach of the Data Protection Act.

It would be interesting to see whether such an approach could work here. If so, Thompson and Clark's business model could get substantially riskier, both for their company and for them personally.

Back in 2016, the High Court declared that National's 2010 prisoner voting ban (the one which was so shabby and shoddily passed that it brought Parliament into disrepute) was inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act. The case has worked its way through the courts, and today it was finally settled by the Supreme Court. Their ruling? That the courts have the power to issue declarations of inconsistency with the BORA. Their reasoning is pretty obvious: declarations are part of the usual arsenal of remedies available to the court, and so are available, just as damages were (the Chief Justice throws in specific statutory authorisation from the Declaratory Judgements Act 1908 as well). While the BORA states that laws are binding despite such a declaration - something else which the court takes as justifying their existence - that does not mean declarations are a worthless remedy. Instead, they are a clear vindication of the right, an explicit statement of the law, and potentially useful in international litigation e.g. before the UN Human Rights Committee. As for the Attorney-General's argument that inconsistent legislation wasn't really inconsistent because it altered the rights in the BORA, that was treated with the contempt it deserves.

What happens next? Nothing much. Because despite its shoddy arguments in this case, the government has already yielded the point and announced plans to give the BORA tiny teeth by explicitly recognising such declarations of inconsistency and requiring Parliament to formally respond to them. Again, that won't allow laws to be overturned - but will force the politicians who pass them (or more likely, their political successors) to rethink the matter and publicly justify themselves. Which is a start. But while they're at it, there's another obvious way they could improve things: by requiring every enactment passed despite a s7 declaration of inconsistency from the Attorney-General to undergo periodic review to determine whether it is still necessary. Which might help Parliament fix its own messes before the judiciary has to put them on formal notice.

Thursday, November 08, 2018

During its final term in office, National removed democracy from the RMA by removing notification and appeal rights while allowing Ministers to dictate local plans from their office in Wellington. now Labour is planning to repeal that as the first step in its program of RMA reform:

Stage One will reverse some objectionable changes made by the previous government in 2017 that were widely criticised.

For example, the Bill would repeal measures that prevent public notification and appeals by applicants and submitters in residential and subdivision consent applications. Proposed residential developments near existing facilities (such as ports, airports, quarries and electricity networks) can have significant impacts on existing operators and their future development options.

[...]

A Bill addressing changes that can be made straight away will be introduced to Parliament early next year.

It will address particular issues with resource consenting, and monitoring and enforcement processes in the RMA.

It will also repeal the broad regulation-making power passed last year, which enabled the Minister for the Environment to override councils. It will retain national direction powers via National Environmental Standards and National Policy Statements.

All of this is good - and amusing, requested by the developers National was trying to help, who found that not being able to submit on or appeal RMA decisions which affected them wasn't such a good idea after all. But it gets better: reading the Cabinet paper, they'll also be reinstating financial contributions (meaning councils will be able to make developers pay the full costs of the required infrastructure, rather than dumping them on ratepayers), and enabling the EPA to take enforcement action to back up councils and enforce the law where they won't.

And then there's stage 2 - the buried lead of which is putting climate change back into the law. Ironicly, it was Labour who removed it, with the Resource Management (Energy and Climate Change) Amendment Act 2004 preventing councils from considering the effects of climate change in RMA decisions. Now, it looks like they want to reverse that mistake. Which should enable councils to refuse consents for fossil fuel extraction and use, unless the impacts on the global climate are somehow mitigated. If actually enforced, that promises to be far more effective than their bullshit ETS.

Another report from the Independent Police Conduct Authority was released today, finding that police who sped at 200 km/h down a busy Auckland motorway during a pursuit violated pursuit policy in multiple ways and should have been charged with dangerous driving. The full report is here, and the behaviour the officers engaged in was appallingly dangerous and would have resulted in prosecution if any member of the public had done it (here's an example). But the police apparently ignored their own procedures, refusing to even investigate. It's just another example of the police protecting their own, and looking the other way on blatant criminal behaviour simply because the perpetrator wore their uniform. That is not acceptable, and it undermines both the rule of law, and public confidence in law enforcement. Unfortunately, because the IPCA took a whole year to investigate, there's now no possibility of charges: dangerous driving is a category 2 offence, and charges must be filed within six months. The IPCA's slow investigation has precluded that, and allowed these uniformed criminals to escape justice. Which doesn't exactly encourage confidence in them either.

Taranaki oil and gas producer TAG Oil is selling its New Zealand operations for US$30 million to Tamarind Resources, citing the less friendly environment for the oil and gas sector as one of its reasons for quitting the country.

[...]

"There wasn't a desire to exit, but there's always a desire to maximise value for shareholders," said Beltgens. The company believed its share price had suffered from investor perception in Canada and the US that the New Zealand government's ban on issuing new offshore oil and gas exploration permits would eventually move onshore too.

While New Zealand was "still quite a bit friendlier than most other places" as a place to do business, that had "changed and not for the better in the last year, year and a half," said Beltgens. "We're slightly immune to that, being onshore, but with the way the winds are blowing, cancelling the offshore block offering, smaller blocks being offered on onshore, it just seems that there's a trend there that we can't ignore."

Good riddance. But its not all good news - according to RNZ, the company they've sold to, Tamarind, "specialises in getting the last out of fields nearing the end of their life". Which means they're a pack of frackers. So they're going to damage our environment to get the last dregs of a dangerous, polluting "resource" for the profit of their foreign owners.

Which invites the question: why didn't the Minister refuse consent for the transfer of the mining permits under s41 of the Crown Minerals Act? Because if we want to end the fossil fuel industry, that's another thing we need to add to the list: refuse transfer if it will result in emissions continuing. This will incidentally destroy their commercial value and the asset values of the companies which hold them, and help to drive these companies into bankruptcy where they belong.

Wednesday, November 07, 2018

This morning Parliament passed the Crown Minerals (Petroleum) Amendment Act, outlawing future offshore oil and gas exploration. As I've already argued, its fatally compromised by allowing existing permits to be extended and expanded - effectively giving the fossil fuel industry an indefinite licence to drill. But its a good first step. Still, it is only a first step. If the government is serious about avoiding catastrophic climate change, it is going to have to revisit this issue. Here's how:

we can't afford to burn the oil and gas we already have, so looking for more is pointless. They need to ban onshore exploration as well.

The ban needs to be an actual ban, which means preventing permits from being extended or expanded, and ending the right to convert exploration permits into mining permits. That way the oil stays in the ground, where it belongs.

Finally, we need to sunset all existing petroleum mining permits, so no more is extracted.

And that's only part of the issue. Obviously we need to eliminate fossil fuel use, by replacing it with renewable and zero-emission technology throughout the economy. But that's a wider problem.

Labour was too cowardly to do what was required and send a clear signal to the oil industry that their time is over. Hopefully Jacinda Ardern's successors will have what it takes to actually confront "our generation's nuclear-free moment".

This is a significant achievement, and it shows the lie behind National's whining about "business confidence". The real economy seems to be working, no matter how upset the rich seem to be about the change of government.

Watching the US elections from the bottom of the world in New Zealand, I'm struck by how ramshackle and decrepit the system is. The tales of broken or even missing voting machines and long queues to vote bring to mind people queuing for food in the old USSR: a symbol of fundamental social failure. This is the sort of shit you expect to see in a failed state, not in one of the world's richest countries. After all, if a democracy can't run elections properly, surely its not worthy of the name.

I know, the US is 50 different election administrations, not just one. But still: this is not something other modern democracies fail at. Its not something voters in other countries tolerate.

For an example of what a properly functioning election system looks like, here's how it works in New Zealand:

You can vote anywhere. None of this "assigned polling place" bullshit and the dirty tricks it enables.

Polling places everywhere, so everyone can get to one. By way of example, my local electorate ("district" in American) had 39 polling places for ~35,000 actual voters (or about 45,000 potential voters). 5 of them had fewer than 6 votes cast.

Enough booths and staff at each polling place so people don't have to queue, unless they arrive in a mob. Its normally a five minute process.

Paper ballots. Because we want our elections to be more reliable than Microsoft Windows.

Plus of course no voter ID bullshit (because fraud is staggeringly rare), no gerrymandering (electoral boundaries are set by a neutral commission), and no politicisation of the system. Voters have an expectation that our elections are free and fair and run impartially, and our politicians accept that. We had a major political storm one year because public service reform and consequent siloisation (TL;DR: an agency which previously helped decided it wasn't their job anymore) meant that the count was slow. I shudder to think what voters would do to a government which made them queue to vote, but there would probably be resignations and sackings. Simply, we expect better from our government than that. We expect it to function. Americans should expect no less.

Tuesday, November 06, 2018

The US midterm elections are tomorrow, and people are quite reasonably painting them as the US's last chance to remain a democracy. But looking at them from New Zealand, that status looks doubtful already. Free and fair elections where the outcome accurately reflects the will of the voters are something we take for granted in New Zealand. Our electoral administration is neutral, our elections free of political manipulation. In the US, its a different story. Gerrymandering, deliberate disenfranchisement, voter suppression, and last-minute changes to make it harder for people to vote - the US has it all. And with widespread use of insecure electronic voting machines, there's also the prospect of outright fraud. Its an election system no-one can have confidence in, stacked to produce unrepresentative outcomes, lacking even the pretence of fairness. And that's simply not how democracies are meant to work.

Tomorrow, we'll see whether the US is still capable of peacefully correcting itself. If not, then Americans who want to live in a democracy should start looking for somewhere else to live.

An unrepresentative Parliament. Political parties taking millions of dollars in secret cash. Crony appointments and revolving door jobs. There's a lot wrong with our political system at the moment, and an international environment where some countries seem to be consciously trying to disrupt democracy or buy influence makes it worse. But a report from a "pop-up think-tank" at the University of Canterbury has proposed some solutions. many of them are obvious: a lower voting age, greater transparency around electoral donations, tighter regulation of lobbyists, and civics in schools. But there's one idea which stands out as bad:

Chapple said one solution was to “consciously limit” democratic rights to citizens, setting up civic education programmes that would run in parallel with the pathway from residency to citizenship.

“New migrants should be strongly encouraged to become citizens, rather than remaining indefinitely as simply sojourning residents.”

This is presented a a "solution" to "foreign influence". But its no solution at all. Instead, it would ensure that some members of our society are denied democratic representation and participation, their interests ignored because (by legal fiat) they just don't count. And that is simply wrong.

Permanent residents have a strong stake in our society. They live here, work here, pay taxes here. They catch the same trains, their kids go to the same schools, and when they get sick they go to the same hospitals as citizens. Our decision to give them the vote is one of the good points of our democracy: we recognise that everyone matters (its also a pragmatic compromise about the complexities of our own pathway to nationhood, our status as a nation of immigrants, and the refusal of some other countries to recognise dual citizenship). Throwing them overboard would be a very definite backwards step. And doing it essentially because of xenophobia, a fear that they might be working for foreign powers with their votes? That just stinks. That's not the sort of nation we are or should ever want to be.

Monday, November 05, 2018

NZTA will be trialling point-to-point speed cameras in Auckland, in the Waterview Tunnel and on the Southern Motorway. Speed is a killer, and these are a useful way of policing it. At the same time, there are obvious privacy concerns. The cameras use automatic number-plate recognition to identify vehicles and match entrance and exit times. The problem is that this effectively creates a database of vehicle movements. If the cameras spread, then there is a danger of introducing widespread surveillance by stealth.

There's an easy solution, of course: dump all information on non-speeding vehicles the moment a vehicle exits the zone. But its unclear at this stage whether NZTA will be doing that. So I guess I'll just have to lodge some OIA requests to find out.

Foreign water bottling plants are a ripoff for New Zealand. Foreigners are essentially given a resource for free, and they then turn around and sell it for at least $1 a litre. That's morally odious and corrupt, but it gets worse: in Christchurch, extracting water to bottle and sell overseas is actually going to threaten drinking water supplies:

A bottling company's bid to take millions of litres of water from a key aquifer could threaten Christchurch's drinking supplies, warns a senior city council manager.

China-owned firm Cloud Ocean Water has this week applied to Environment Canterbury (ECan) for permission to extract water from a 186m-deep bore at its Belfast plant so it can sell it abroad.

But documents published online by a leading councillor reveal serious worries that approving the request could compromise the aquifer and leave parts of the city short of drinking water.

[...]

"[The deep bore] is located within council's North West water supply zone where we are planning for a 50 per cent increase in demand over the next 30 years, 20 per cent of which is expected to be realised within the next 10 years.

"There are several future residential and industrial growth areas in close proximity to this proposal … that may therefore also trigger increased future industrial demand."

This is like Ashburton, only worse. One of our major cities is going to be sucked dry, its residents left to go thirsty while foreigners drink their water. But Ashburton also shows how you handle it: organise, threaten the council at the ballot box, and let political cowardice take its course. Voters need to make it clear that they will not tolerate being sold out, and de-elect every councillor who supports bottling. But that's not enough. Because as long as the law supports this pillage on a national level, people are still going to try it.

We need to change that law. If we can't outlaw extraction for export, we should at least make sure these foreigners pay a fair price for our water. At the usual prices, Cloud Ocean Water stands to make tens of billions of dollars from its consent. And its only right that a fair chunk of that money flows straight back to its owners: Ngai Tahu and the people of New Zealand.

Another day, and another article full of special pleading from farmers (or their mouthpieces) about how the rest of us should continue to subsidise them on climate change. This one is from National MP Stuart Smith, and takes the usual farmer line that cars, not cows, are the real threat to climate. The "justification" is that methane, produced by cows, is a short-lived greenhouse gas, whereas carbon dioxide, produced by cars, is long-lived, and hangs around forever. Utterly ignored: methane decays into carbon dioxide, so its effectively a long-lived gas anyway, while its warming effect - the thing that does the damage - is significantly higher than that of CO2. Our normal greenhouse maths averages this out over 100 years, during which a ton of methane has 34 times the warming effect of a ton of CO2 (the ETS uses the older estimate of 25 times - another hidden subsidy). If we look at a shorter timescale, the warming effect of 20 years is 86 times that of carbon dioxide (or 72 times in subsidy-maths). If we look at a longer one, its still seven times as bad over 500 years.

In other words, no matter how you look at it, methane is worse for warming than carbon dioxide. But worse, the climate crisis is now, so we no longer have a long-term to average over. We need to reduce warming as quickly as possible, to stop it from shifting the climate and driving destructive storms. And the most effective way of doing that is to target high-GWP gases. The bonus with methane is that because it is short-lived, the short-term effects of reducing it will be so-much greater, and the temperature will be that much faster to return to normal. Meanwhile, a rapid reduction of warming due to methane will give us time for longer-term solutions to deal with long-lived gases.

So, we should draw the opposite conclusion from farmers' special pleading on methane: rather than ignoring it, we should target it. We should target cars too, of course, but if we really want to do something effective, we need to target cows.

Thursday, November 01, 2018

If we are to avoid catastrophic climate change, then we need to end the mining and use of fossil fuels. This means not just ending oil, which the government is taking its first feeble steps towards today, but also coal. There are currently 15 operating coal mines in New Zealand, and every single one of them needs to be shut down. So how do we do it? The first step is to prohibit exploration and mining under the Crown Minerals Act. This would require a number of amendments:

A new section stating that despite anything to the contrary in the Act, no permit of any type may be issued for coal.

An amendment to section 32 (which allows exploration and prospecting permits to be converted to mining permits) to make it clear that nothing in that section shall apply to any permit for coal.

An amendment to section 36 (which allows permits to be varied) stating that no permit for coal may be changed to extend its duration, the land to which it relates, or change its conditions so as to remove or extend any condition under which the permit or any land to which it applies would otherwise be required to be surrendered.

That cuts off the pipeline. But we would also need to kill existing permits. A clause simply cancelling them entirely after a specified date (say, 1 January 2030) would do that.

But effectively forbidding mining under the Crown Minerals Act regime doesn't solve the problem, because the Act applies only to mining crown-owned minerals. Coal is not necessarily government owned, and mining coal on private land is not regulated by the Act. So, we'd also need to change the resource management regime to shut those down. The way to do that within the RMA scheme would be to issue a National Environmental Standard to prohibit mining coal, so one way of doing it would be to add mining to the list of things NES's can be issued for, and statutorily require the Minister to issue one prohibiting the mining of coal. Alternatively, we could follow the scheme used for banning the dumping of radioactive waste, and just have a clear statutory ban. The complicating factor is that there are resource consents in place which will need to be phased out (by prohibiting the granting of new ones and issuing a statutory cutoff on existing ones), so that will require transition clauses.

But won't people just import? That's the easiest problem to solve: the government can simply, at an appropriate time, declare coal to be a prohibited import under the Customs and Excise Act (we can also use this to prohibit exports, to kill the coal industry earlier if we want). Such a prohibition must be "necessary in the public interest", but in the wake of the latest IPCC report and if things keep going the way they are going, that's not going to be difficult to prove.

The Crown Minerals (Petroleum) Amendment Bill, which is supposedly about banning offshore oil exploration, is back before the House for its second reading this afternoon. I say "supposedly", because the government has left loopholes in the bill the oil industry can drive a supertanker through, in the form of rights to vary and convert permits. Many submitters (including myself) warned the government about these loopholes, and urged that they be closed. But rather than close them, the government has instead chosen to entrench them in law, with a specific clause saying that existing permits will be treated as if the law had never been passed. This incidentally means that the prohibition on drilling on Taranaki conservation land will not apply, and that those permits could be extended onto DoC land, but I guess the government doesn't care about that, any more than it care about climate change.

I am hoping that the Greens will put up some amendments at the committee stage to fix the bill, but I doubt they will pass. Which will simply mean we will need further legislation in future to close those loopholes. Because if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change, the oil industry must be destroyed - and that means not just ending exploration, but stopping all future drilling, and (eventually) closing existing wells. The earlier we do that, the safer we will be.

Lubeck's bill, the Prohibition of Conversion Therapy Bill, prohibits any person from advertising, offering, or performing a treatment that seeks to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity in New Zealand.

"Conversion therapy is unproven, widely condemned and does not reflect the values of a modern and compassionate New Zealand."

She said the bill is about supporting young people to be proud of who they are.

Firstly, there's an obvious prima facie Bill of Rights violation with the advertising ban and the right to freedom of expression. But I'm confident that that will be found to be a justified limitation in a free and democratic society. We already prohibit quack medical advertisements, and this seems no different. As for the actual practice, the article notes that the NZ Association of Psychotherapists and the NZ Association of Counsellors note that it violates basic ethical standards for their practice. In other words, they prohibit it already. Insofar as its performed by non-professionals, it seems to be practising (purported) medicine without a licence - again, something we protect the public from. Add in the important duty of the government to protect people from discrimination, and I have no trouble at all with this bill.

Naturally, of course, leader of the opposition Simon Bridges is uncertain. Which I think tells you everything you need to know about the man. He's a snivelling little worm, too immoral to do what is right, but lacking the courage of his convictions to be open about his bigotry. Which seems to be a long tradition in the National Party...

Former attorney-general George Brandis says he expects there will be no children of refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru by the end of the year.

More children have been transferred for treatment, with Government sources confirming there are now 40 on the Pacific Island — down from 52 last week.

[...]

The Australian newspaper is reporting that all the children will be transferred off the island by the end of the year.

The Federal Government is refusing to confirm that timeline but Mr Brandis, who is now High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, says it is a reasonable expectation.

I guess there's nothing like being thrashed in a by-election to focus a government's mind. But while this is good news, its only part of the battle: the Australian government needs to free its adult detainees as well as the children. And until they do that, and close down their concentration camps, you should not buy Australian.

This is just wrong - both the assault and the pointed silence and complicity of other officers. And it shows that the New Zealand Police have learned nothing from the police rape affair, and utterly failed to stamp out the culture of silence and cops defending their own which allowed Rickards, Shipton and Schollum to rape so many women for so long.

One of the odd things about Australia is that it is almost alone in western democracies in not having formal protection for human rights. But Australia is a federation, and where the federal government sits on its hands - perhaps so it can continue its abhorrent treatment of refugees - the states will act. Victoria and the Australian capital Territory have already enshrined human rights in law, and now the state of Queensland will join them:

Queenslanders will have protections for 23 human rights enshrined in law, such as freedom of expression, religion and privacy, and a right to education and health services.

"The primary aim of this bill is to ensure that respect for human rights is embedded in the culture of the Queensland public sector, and that public functions are exercised in a principled way that is compatible with human rights," she said.

"The bill will require departments, agencies and public entities to make decisions and act in a way that is consistent with human rights."

The bill is here. Comparing it to our own Bill of Rights Act, it has a similar requirement for legislation to be interpreted through the lens of the affirmed rights, and a similar requirement for bills to be assessed on introduction to parliament (though this is done by the member introducing them, and is positive - a declaration of compatibility - rather than negative - a declaration of inconsistency. Which invites all sorts of bullshit from self-interested politicians). The rights themselves are more expansive, including rights to health and education, property and culture, but apply only to natural persons - corporations have no rights. The real difference is that where a law is found to be inconsistent with human rights - that is, no rights-compatible interpretation is possible - the courts can formally issue a declaration of inconsistency, and the government must respond, and that response must be scrutinised by Parliament. On the flip side, damages in human rights suits are forbidden, meaning there's no effective means of enforcement for low-level abuses. Another weird point is that the law doesn't apply to the judiciary and courts themselves - they're required to interpret the law in a rights-consistent fashion, but have no duties to respect human rights themselves in e.g. sentencing decisions or court procedures.

There's ideas here New Zealand might want to steal when updating the BORA, but also things that don't seem like such a good idea. Still, its a huge advance for Queensland, and hopefully the federal government will eventually be forced to follow suit.

Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Humanity has wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970, leading the world’s foremost experts to warn that the annihilation of wildlife is now an emergency that threatens civilisation.

The new estimate of the massacre of wildlife is made in a major report produced by WWF and involving 59 scientists from across the globe. It finds that the vast and growing consumption of food and resources by the global population is destroying the web of life, billions of years in the making, upon which human society ultimately depends for clean air, water and everything else.

“We are sleepwalking towards the edge of a cliff” said Mike Barrett, executive director of science and conservation at WWF. “If there was a 60% decline in the human population, that would be equivalent to emptying North America, South America, Africa, Europe, China and Oceania. That is the scale of what we have done.”

Habit destruction, hunting and fishing are the chief culprits. And its only going to get worse as climate change bites. We are committing ecocide, destroying the natural environment we rely on for our survival.

As for what we can do about it, in New Zealand at least we can try and protect what we have, by locking land away under DoC protection and imposing marine reserves and strengthening the quota system to limit fishing. But over 80% of our native animal species are endangered, so we need to be doing a lot more than we are at present to protect them.

Australia's policy of imprisoning refugees in offshore concentration camps has long had bipartisan support, but recently there's been some hope that that support was fading and the policy of cruelty might be able to be ended by electoral means. Sadly, that hope has been dashed, with the Australian Labor Party pledging to keep torturing refugees in camps forever, just as Tony Abbott did:

Australia's opposition Labor Party will maintain the offshore processing of asylum seekers if it forms government.

Leader Bill Shorten has told the Lowy Institute that Operation Sovereign Borders would be "fully resourced".

Under the programme, asylum seekers who have arrived in Australia by boat since 2013 have been sent to detention centres on Nauru and Papua New Guinea's Manus Island.

Mr Shorten says his government would look to appoint an Ambassador for Refugees and boost efforts to find resettlement countries.

"Stopping the boats was never meant to leave people languishing in indefinite detention," Mr Shorten said in his speech.

In other words, the ALP's big "solution" is to look for other countries to dump the problem on - a quest which ignores their moral and legal responsibilities to their victims. Meanwhile, the ALP's position combined with Australia's use of full preferential voting (an establishment rort requiring voters or parties to preference every candidate for their vote to be valid) means that voters and parties who oppose concentration camps cannot effectively threaten to withhold their electoral support from the parties who support this cruelty - meaning that there is no electoral pressure for change. The Greens might oppose concentration camps, but unless they win, their preferences will ultimately flow to Labor, who support them. The only hope of change is for a change in the leadership and direction of the ALP.

Meanwhile, if you're outside Australia, remember: don't buy Australian. Buying Australian goods means supplying the Australian government with tax revenue - tax revenue it spends on the torture and abuse of refugees. If you support refugees, you should boycott Australia until its policy changes.

Future coal mining applications are set to be rejected as a matter of policy for the first time in Wales.

New proposed planning rules, which are due to be finalised by the Welsh Government by the end of the year, would only allow permission under "wholly exceptional circumstances".

[...]

Haf Elgar, director of Friends of the Earth Cymru, said: "It is a historic moment. This is the end of coal in Wales after a long association and history."

She added: "We have to be aware of our global responsibility and the impact all of the coal has had over the years and to make sure that we really do play our part in Wales now to be globally responsible and to reduce our carbon emissions,"

This is something that needs to happen if we are to avoid catastrophic temperature change and the human consequences it entails. we can't afford to burn the coal we're already mining, let alone dig up more, so its go to stay in the ground. And if somewhere like Wales, which was once one of the biggest coal mining areas in the world, can do it, then so can we.

Monday, October 29, 2018

If we are to avoid catastrophic levels of climate change - meaning war, famine and death - humanity needs to end fossil fuel use by 2050. And Spain has just taken the first step, shutting down its coal industry:

Spain is to shut down most of its coalmines by the end of the year after government and unions struck a deal that will mean €250m (£221m) will be invested in mining regions over the next decade.

Pedro Sánchez’s new leftwing administration has moved quickly on environmental policy, abolishing a controversial “sunshine tax” on the solar industry, and announcing the launch of Spain’s long-delayed national climate plan next month.

Unions hailed the mining deal – which covers Spain’s privately owned pits – as a model agreement. It mixes early retirement schemes for miners over 48, with environmental restoration work in pit communities and re-skilling schemes for cutting-edge green industries.

Most of the mines being shut down were uneconomic, so this is simply doing what the market would have done anyway, while saving billions of Euro in subsidies. They've made a huge shift to renewable energy in the past decade, and practically eliminated coal from the electricity system, so its not going to cause problems for their electricity sector. But it will remove a dangerous source of pollution.

So, the obvious question is when are we going to follow Spain's lead? Most of the coal we mine is exported, and there seems to be little need to allow that to continue. Meanwhile, our major coal users have announced plans to exit the market: Huntly will close in 2022, and Fonterra is switching to electricity in the South Island. Announcing a phased shutdown will help drive that process, while pushing those industries still dependent on coal to look for alternatives. So, when will the government do it? Or is their talk of climate change being "my generation's nuclear-free moment" just hot air?

While things seem to be going badly all over the world, with a murderous autocrat winning in Brazil, plus the ongoing retreat from democracy in the US, there is one place where things seem to be heading in the right direction: Ireland. In recent years, Irish voters have voted overwhelmingly for marriage equality and legal abortion. And now, the same liberal consensus has done it again, overturning the country's medieval blasphemy law:

Ireland has voted to remove blasphemy as an offence from the country’s constitution.

In a referendum, 64.8 per cent of voters were in favour of changing the law, with 35.1 per cent supporting the status quo.

The result was largely expected, as the article on blasphemy in the constitution is generally agreed to be outdated and obsolete.

The amendment finally needs to be brought into law and the outdated offences formally repealed, but its pretty much done.

If you're wondering, our government's bill to repeal blasphemy in New Zealand is currently waiting for its second reading.

Friday, October 26, 2018

During the election campaign, Jacinda Ardern promised that if elected she would decriminalise abortion. Labour followed up on that by referring the issue to the Law Commission for consideration. Today, the Law Commission reported back, with three options for reform:

Under Model A there would be no statutory test that must be satisfied before an abortion could be performed. The decision whether to have an abortion would be made by the woman concerned in consultation with her health practitioner.

Under Model B there would be a statutory test. The health practitioner who intends to perform an abortion would need to be satisfied that the abortion is appropriate in the circumstances, having regard to the woman’s physical and mental health and wellbeing.

Under Model C, there would be no statutory test until 22 weeks of a pregnancy. After 22 weeks, the health practitioner who intends to perform an abortion would need to be satisfied that the abortion is appropriate in the circumstances, having regard to the woman’s physical and mental health and wellbeing.

Doctors overwhelmingly supported model A (which is used in Canada and the ACT), with a tiny fraction supporting model C. Nobody seems to have supported model B, and its pretty obviously there as salmonella. But what's worth noting is that any of these models is going to mean repealing the Crimes Act provisions and regulating abortion under the existing regulatory framework for health services, and ending the requirement for women to jump through hoops, declare themselves mentally ill, and endure the wagging finger of society. Abortion will be a health service, between a woman and her doctor.

And now its a question of which option the government will choose. Which is going to be a matter of ugly horse trading between Labour's young progressive women, and its old conservative / bigot rump and coalition partner. Because it will be a conscience vote, they'll also be looking across the House for liberal National MPs to secure a majority (assuming there are any: it seems any ambitious Nat feels obliged to grovel to the bigots and misogynists). It would be good if National's supposed liberals stepped up and made it clear which options they would support, but that would require them to display both principle and courage. And sadly, that seems to be too much to expect from politicians.

Documents released under the Official Information Act show Mr Twyford received no advice in relation to solar power and the 100,000 affordable homes the Government wants to build through the Kiwibuild programme.

Mr Twyford told Newshub it's too expensive at the moment. He says it could've added $15,000 in price to each home.

"Until the cost of domestic solar comes down, I don't think it's going to be practical financially to put them on Kiwibuild homes."

According to My Solar Quotes New Zealand, the average price to install solar power is $9000.

...and it pays itself back while you live there, and will be even cheaper with mass installations.

KiwiBuild is a massive opportunity to significantly upgrade our housing stock, and raise housing standards. But its also a massive opportunity to drive the shift to decentralised, renewable generation we desperately need to make to reduce electricity emissions and enable the shift to electric vehicles. Twyford's penny-pinching is squandering that opportunity. And its another sign that Labour isn't taking climate change seriously, and that all Ardern's fine words are just more hot air from uncaring, institutionally compromised politicians.

Thursday, October 25, 2018

Oregon Governor Kate Brown announced a plan to block offshore drilling off the state's coast on Monday.

"At a time when the states are doing more than the federal government to protect the environment, the Trump administration is trying to allow oil rigs to be built off of every single coast line in America except for Florida," Brown said in a Facebook Live event. "I'm tired of waiting for the federal government to come to their senses and realize this is a terrible mistake."

[...]

"Today I'm announcing that I will sign an executive order to permanently ban offshore drilling along the Oregon coast," Brown said, announcing she would work with state Senator Arnie Roblan, a Democrat who has spoken out against offshore drilling, to "make sure that no future governor can reverse this executive order with the stroke of a pen."

Hopefully other US states will follow suit. If we are to avoid catastrophic climate change, we need to end the oil industry, and the first step towards that is ending offshore exploration and drilling. Though this being the US, no doubt we'll see a series of court cases over the balance between state and federal rights to regulate, which will ultimately be resolved in favour of whichever lobbyists control the political party which has most recently stacked the Supreme Court...

The Government could face a decade-long battle over Māori rights to freshwater, a conflict with potential to become as difficult as the controversial Foreshore and Seabed Act.

Some legal minds are saying Māori are entitled to ownership of water - including the right to restrict others' use, and to compensation for unpaid royalties.

Darrell Naden of Tamaki Legal told Newshub denying Māori ownership to water is akin to the confiscation of land by early Pākehā settlers.

[...]

Regional Development Minister Shane Jones said the Government could face a decade in court.

"I'm deeply fearful of another 10 to 15 years of litigation," he said on Tuesday.

Of course, there's a solution to that: settle. The government did it before, with fisheries, and it can do it again. And its pretty obvious what any settlement would look like: a share of any royalties or tradeable rights and a voice in environmental control. But the barrier to that doesn't seem to be iwi, but a government which is absolutely unwilling to address the issue. But if they refuse to even explore settlement, they have only themselves to blame when iwi seek to enforce their rights through the courts instead.

Travel perks for former MPs and their spouses or partners cost $1.1 million in the past year - but at least two of the ex-MPs, with quite differing ideologies, are dubious about the allowances.

The figures are included in the Parliamentary Service annual report for the 2017-2018 year. They show more than $350,000 was spent on former MPs, along with more than $320,000 on spouses or partners. Fringe benefit taxes added a substantial $435,000.

Among the top spenders were Roger Maxwell and his partner, who spent $22,180 between, Steve Maharey and his partner with $21,652, Warren Kyd and his partner with $20,614, and Sir Lockwood Smith and his partner with $20,064.

The allowances can be paid to former MPs elected before 1999, and their partners. The amount also depends on how many terms they served. There's no allowance for those with fewer than two terms, and most former MPs don't get anything unless they spent three terms in Parliament.

As I've argued over the years, this "perk" has never been justified. MPs have never been poorly paid (except perhaps in their own minds), and the other myths trotted out by the entitled rorters to "justify" it turn out to be false as well. On the flip side: every single one of these former MPs was handsomely paid while in Parliament. How much longer should we be expected to subsidise their sense of entitlement?

It is long past time to end this rort. Doing so will require an Act of Parliament. Which MP wants to put up the bill?